Mom And Teacher Upcycles Snack Boxes Into Pop Culture Masks

Hey! I’m Melissa. I’m a mom, wife, and teacher in Oregon. But before all that, I have been a lover of pop culture. Since early childhood, I remember raiding through the newest issue of Tiger Beat and imagining my dream wedding with Jonathan Taylor Thomas (90’s gal here!) My bedroom was decorated with all the appropriate JTT, Devon Sawa and Brad Renfro posters (RIP).

As I grew older and got into the education game, I carried over my love of oddball pop culture into the classroom. If you ever want to feel old, talk to an 8 year old about what is considered cool. Not a damn thing you recognize. I may have educated myself on the ways of Fort Nite and Pokemon, but still manage to sneak my interests into the classroom. (Vanilla Ice actually helps teach social skills in my classroom, y’all!) The kids don’t relate, per say, but it makes my days more bright.

At home, drawing and crafting have always been hobbies of mine, (you know, when I’m not reading about the latest TV cliffhangers) so if and when I can merge the two, I will. My husband is a tattooer and owns his own shop, so we have a pretty sweet home art set up. So, for my friend’s birthday I made her a Marky Mark book end set (and yes of course I used the Calvin Klein ads). For my sister’s birthday, I made her a 12 month rotation of hot male celebs in a planter for a mantle. I dubbed it her “Man-tle” hardy har har. For my sister-in-law, I made a RuPaul inspired homecoming present.

(Fun fact: I do not have a single tattoo and have been happily with to my college boo tattooer for the past 15 years)

Parenting and the Pandemic

I have two kids; a 5 year old son, Van and a 1 year old daughter, Sloane. We call them the Wildcard and the Beast, if that is any indicator of their temperament. So when the schools in Oregon shut due to Covid-19 in March, we barred down and started social distancing. Since I am a teacher, I was able to do most of my job at home and my husband owns his own tattoo shop so with some help with Grandma, we made it work (some days not as well).

Any parent with young kids will tell you, these homebound days can be more tiring than day out and about. We played outside, read, baked, made art, and yes, yes in fact, we watched a lot of screen time. I would gladly adopt my son’s iPad and proudly make it my golden child if I could. It became so imperative in survival with two young ones that I had no other choice but to embrace it. Shocker: when your son has somewhat free reign on Netflix and Disney+, it becomes a slippery slope into new interests. He started asking for characters I had never heard of from some Korean animated series on Netflix that had no dialogue but a lot of farting worms.

An Opportunity

All this screen time sure was making Van’s imagination run wild. He had so many stories he wanted to play and no one to play it with. Sloane was typecast into roles such as “monster” and “crazybaby” and I could never deliver the lines of “bad guy” with the finesse and charisma my young offspring demanded.

One day, he asked if he could wear a haggard old Halloween Spiderman cloth mask out to the store and what a reception he received. “Oh, hi Spiderman!” “Glad you are here to protect the store, Spiderman.” A tone was set. Van needed to impress on his outings and the unsuspecting people of our grocery store needed to be shocked and amazed with a new mask each and every appearance. Thus, I became a mask making factory. Our neighborhood stores have had appearances by the following:

Buzz Lightyear

Forky from Toy Story

Spiderman

Batman

Deadpool

Venom Sonic

Catwoman

Miles Morales

Gwen Stacy

Tails from Sonic

Lizzie McGuire

Homer Simpson

Vanellope von Schweetz

Shrek

Count von Count

Spongebob Squarepants

Panda from We Bare Bears

MxPx Pokinatcha

Blink 182 Bunny

Baldi from YouTube

Bendy from YouTube

C3P0

Slimer from Ghostbusters

Lady Slimer from Ghostbusters

Hamilton

King George from Hamilton

-and counting!

The Process and Materials

The process goes 1 of 2 ways. The first, Van puts in a request and I do an image search for an agreed upon item. The second is I will convince Van something I want to make is super cool and basically tell him he will in fact love Hamilton. Regardless of the character origination, I gather any cardboard we have around the house (cereal, snack boxes, soda boxes, Amazon Prime boxes, etc.) and deconstruct the character into pieces I can spray paint or glue, depending on the quality of the paper. The stronger pieces of cardboard don’t require as much Mod Podge. After that, I will use Sharpies or paint to add detail. Then I will piece them back together, adding any final touches. One final coat last thing of Mod Podge to make sure everything is solid. Last, I will line it up on myself or my son to measure the appropriate placement for eye holes. Some characters work best with the eye holes where the character eyes are. Some I have made the holes in different spots. I will hot glue some netting or screen to the back of the mask for the eye holes. This isn’t super needed as the only reason I even started this is because we had extra screen handy after needing to replace a window screen due to too much cat love.

Usual materials needed:

Cardboard

Mod Podge

Assorted colors of spray paint

Sharpies or other markers

Acrylic paint

Brushes

Stretchy string

Scissors

Paper cutter/razor

Hot glue

Screen (like for a window)

Most of the masks take a few hours total, but it works with my mom schedule. I do 10-15 minutes work, tend to my lovely children while stuff dries, and return to do more.

The Pay Off

For the most part, I spend very little on any of these masks. I restock my Mod Podge and spray paint when needed and always have cardboard and string lying around. I use the masks to implement good behavior (special education teacher here and all). Van puts in a request for a mask and I give him my expectations to earn it. Once he follows through, he gets a mask and a photo shoot.

*Another bonus, I can watch Hamilton any time I want because he can run to his room and grab his mask with the spit on it!

Masks and Students

When the spring came and teachers were shoved into distance learning, we tried the best we could to adapt. I had some students unable to connect on Zoom for various reasons, but one a big one for some kids on IEPs in the anxiety of being on camera. Another big issue we found after the novelty of online learning wore off and less and less kids were attending sessions was just engagement. They were not having any fun being put on mute and looking at their screen while a teacher talks. Having a silly mask that can be worn, by either me or the kids, can add a level of fun to this dim situation. I have already used a few to spice up staff meetings.

More info: buzzfeed.com